Tag Archives: Events

We are back after a wee holiday with some amazing events for the coming month. Be sure to email us if you have any events you think fit the bill for the update, and feel free to link people to the subscription page (all in the events tab here).

Recent media coverage of high profile sexual abuse cases prompted some commentators to question if we are witnessing a ‘moral panic’ in relation to sexual abuse. Join us for presentations and debate about the implications of framing sexual abuse in these terms for survivors, practitioners and researchers.

This half day seminar organised by the Gender Based Violence Research Network is free to attend, but places are limited.

On Thursday 30th October the Old Hairdressers will be hosting a meeting for punks and other musical miscreants interested in discussing ideas for the creation of new DIY spaces for practice, performance and connected activities in Glasgow. Inspired by recent developments in England such as JT Soar and DIY Space For London, as well as the long-standing European autonomous centre model(s), the evening will be an opportunity to put forward proposals, consider practicalities, make connections with like-minded people, and most importantly to form plans of action to live up to those three letters we hold so dear.

Prior to the discussion, we’re hoping to be able to screen NO FUN CITY (2010, 84 mins). The film documents the Vancouver punk scene’s fight to sustain itself in the context of and in opposition to local bureaucracy and creeping gentrification, themes particularly pertinent to our own fair city.

Closing off the night will be DJs and a performance from BLACK COP on the first date of their European ‘fact-finding mission’. Afficianados of all things angry will be as equally enthused as doyens of daft dancing by this tour-de-force of whirlwind hardcore punk.

Doors 7pm, film screening begins 7.30pm
Suggested donation £3

All money received after costs will be donated to the Unity Centre, which provides practical solidarity and support for asylum seekers in Glasgow (for more information see http://unitycentreglasgow.org/)

The housing monster’s voracious appetite for land and rent has pushed the cost of living to breaking point. In Glasgow, public housing has been eradicated since stock transfer in 2003. Rents in the ‘social housing’ sector inexorably move closer to private-market levels. Mortgage rates continue to rise disproportionately to people’s income, and housing is the staple ingredient of the debt-based economy. Yet ‘the housing question’ seems strangely absent from current debates. This event places housing at the front of the agenda, creating a forum for debate, discussion, and resistance.

The day will comprise three films on housing which will be used to prompt discussion about the current state of housing in the UK, and Scotland more specifically. In the morning we will discuss the current (miserable) state of housing across tenures and in the afternoon we will discuss the forms of organisation around housing that might be possible or desirable in the current era.

We want to engage with a range of different groups. Not with the intention of generating a false unity, but with the hope that we can learn from each others’ struggles through discussion and find ways to challenge the housing monster in the present and future. It is our contention that these struggles will have to be undertaken at a range of different levels and that a plurality of struggles, both defensive and offensive, is welcome and necessary. All those with similar interests are warmly invited.

“Myths and fiction have finally spilled over into reality and now… it’s time for survival. You’ve seen the reports and how it’s escalating. It’s only a matter of time till it’s at your doorstep so it’s time to stock up on supplies and anything you can use to defend yourself.

If you’re reading this and wondering what it all means then you obviously haven’t noticed the strange behaviour from few people lately. Well… I’d say, even at this point, they’re far too gone to be people.

As I said, we’re all going to need supplies to last us as long as possible. There’s plenty of them in the City Centre of Glasgow. Let’s meet at Rottenrow Gardens and make the effort together, using power in numbers, to collect them. Don’t forget you weapon of choice.”

Many Movements is proud to present it’s first interactive experience in the form of a ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ on Sunday the 2nd of November. This is a free event that we hope to make an annual event if successful.

Location: Rottenrow Gardens.

Player content:

There are safe areas at the top and bottom of Rottenrow Gardens. Also, an established perimeter before hand which players can not go beyond. Players must go from one safe area to another in a specific area in set rounds over 1 hour. Dependant on numbers we may create teams on the day.

Rounds – Time is of the essence! A whistle will signal the start of a 2 minute time limit to arrive at said ‘safe area’. A horn will signal the last 30 seconds in order to prompt players of time left. Finally 3 whistles will signal the end of each 2 minute round. If you fail to arrive at the appropriate safe area on time you will be eliminated.

Weapons – Arm yourself! There will be a limited number of weapons at the start of the game. Over the hour these weapons will continue to be limited. How you ask? The rules of the game dictate that you can only use your weapon once. After that you must drop it to the ground, prey and continue running.

Zombies:

Pay attention! Zombies tend to hunt better later into the night. You may not be scared of the Zombies at the start but as the game progresses your skills will be tested. If a Zombie touches you then you will be eliminated.

Referees:

It’s important that we have someone to help ensure the game runs smoothly. If you feel that you would like to be a referee yourself instead of taking part then please message Many Movements directly.

Disclaimer:

Players must be 16+. This is a free event and all participants who decide to play the game enter at their own risk. Many Movements, it’s organisers and Zombies taking part shall not be held liable during your participation in the event.
Concept by Scott Houston
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Lies, Cover-Ups, Theft, and Death: The Psychology of Corporate Corruption – Dr Adam Moore | Glasgow Skeptics
Monday, November 3 at 7.00pm – 9.30pm
The Admiral Bar, 72a Waterloo Street, G2 7DA

Why does it seem like every other day we hear news about another scandal: banks fixing interest rate; mortgage companies giving loans to those who can’t afford them; investment firms scamming their investors; and corporations covering up evidence of profiting from crime. The above are just some of the more recent stories we’ve all heard.

This presents a challenge to psychologists – how can we understand and explain how so many people commit obviously immoral acts?

Adam will dissect a number of famous cases of corporate violence and corruption, focusing on the elements they share in common, and argue that otherwise normal people can easily become co-conspirators in horrifyingly immoral actions.

Dr Adam Moore received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2011, where his work focused on developing a computational model of the cognitive processes underlying moral judgement. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Advanced Brain Imaging, at the Georgia Institute for Technology, where he conducted neuroimaging investigations into self-control, working memory, and attentional focus. He accepted a faculty position at the University of Edinburgh in 2012, where he continues to research judgement and decision making, moral psychology, and human cognition. Adam spoke to Glasgow Skeptics in December 2013, in a talk titled, “Moral Judgment and Moral Emotion: What Have We Learned About Mass Atrocity?”
Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately, this leaves the basement inaccessible to most wheelchair users.
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To commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the First World War, the theme of this year’s SLHS annual conference is the role of women during the conflict. Speakers include Professor Sheila Rowbotham (The University of Manchester), Dr Billy Kenefick (The University of Dundee), Dr Annmarie Hughes and Dr Rose Elliot (The University of Glasgow). This one-day event will include a sandwich lunch and the society’s AGM, and is kindly supported by the Glasgow General APEX branch of the GMB.

Nate Phelps is son of the late Fred Phelps, founder and patriarch of the Westboro Baptist Church – “the most hated family in America”. Nate is Executive Director of the Centre for Inquiry Calgary. A vocal LGBT advocate, he speaks out against the dangers of religion and child abuse, and serves on the board of directors for Recovering from Religion.

Join us for a very special evening – on Glasgow Skeptics’ fifth birthday – in which we hear from Nate Phelps, in an incredibly moving talk on the Westboro Baptist Church, the childhood he spent growing up in it, and how he came to leave his family behind at the stroke of midnight on his 18th birthday.

K325, John Anderson Building
University of Strathclyde
107 Rottenrow East,
Glasgow
G4 0NG

Accessibility: The John Anderson Building features a lift that provides access to K325.
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Jim Dick: Life is Dutiful!
Thursday, November 13 at 7.00pm
The Arches, 253 Argyle Street, G2 8DL

The Arches presents an exhibition of new works by Jim Dick. Join us for the launch event on Thursday 13th November, 7-9pm, for drinks and a DJ set from Afrodeesia.

“Every time people perform an activity they have not themselves defined and do not themselves control, every time they pay for goods they produce with money they received in exchange for their alienated activity, every time they passively admire the products of their own activity as alien objects procured by money, they give new life to Capital and annihilate their own lives…”
Fredy Perlman, The Reproduction of Daily Life

This exhibition presents a series of drawings prompted by the pantomime characters we often find ourselves forced to adopt in the reproduction of the social and economic relations of Capitalism.

In July 2008, The Arches hosted The Glasgow School of Art graduate’s ‘Fornixxation’ exhibition; a series of compelling paintings on the theme of subconscious memories, desires and symbolic associations.

Anarchism and feminism have been intertwined for over a century, however mainstream feminism often fails as a movement for liberation for the working classes, while anarchist organising often reproduces the same patterns of sexism and misogyny we see through the world. To address these and many other points, this year seen the first in what hopes to be a series of international anarchist feminist conferences.

Several Glaswegians were able to head down and attend and will report back on the conference set-up, the main points of discussion, the thoughts towards current activities, and their thoughts on the direction of anarcha-feminist organising both here and globally in light of the conference.

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Glasgow AF discussion group is open and free to all, however any donations towards costs will be appreciated. Tea/coffee/juice/biscuits will be provided free of charge. Our venue is accessible to wheelchairs/powerchairs. We will also have a book stall from the RiB project with books and other related material for sale. We ask that all those attending this event read the brief introduction to our safer spaces policy here: https://glasgowanarchists.wordpress.com/safer-spaces/

The Glasgow Social Centre collective is working towards opening a space for grassroots and community-based projects and groups to meet and work from. If you are interested in getting involved in this project then get in touch!
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Sunday the 19th of October seen the first International Anarcha-Feminist Conference, aka AFem2014. The seed from which it would eventually grow fell from the tree back in August of 2012. That tree was the St Imier International Congress anarcha-feminist round table. This was series of meetings that took place on each of the five days of that event. In the closing session it’s participants announced their plans to host an anarcha-feminist congress of their own within several years. This was met by thunderous applause from the congress floor. Busily contacts were exchanged, interested parties came forward, and a group agreed to take lead on the project.

Then nothing.

Months passed.

The Anarchist Federation started to get occasional contacts asking if we knew of any organising on the Anarcha-Feminist Congress. Our international secretaries put out inquiries thought our sibling federations in IFA as well as any other contacts in the global anarchist movement. After some investigation it appeared that no planning had happened, and those who had stepped forward at St. Imier were out of contact. Sometimes things just can’t get done, such is the nature of being in a struggle, and definitely not something to be ashamed of.

That may have been the end of it if it wasn’t for one federation member deciding that this idea was necessary to both counter the failings of feminism outside the anarchist movement, with all other branches of thought happy to throw more and more people under the bus in the name of capitalism; and also within, as we see elements of the anarchist movement where misogyny and sexism are rife and where little more than lip service is given to overcoming the power structures surrounding gender, especially in regard to groups marginalized even by other feminists.

Discussions were had and soon proposals drafted for the fed to kickstart the previously proposed international event. The discussions were thorough and some of the goals laid out at this early stage. This wasn’t to be a project hosted only by the AF (as had previous anarcha-feminist events we had been involved in organising), or just undertaken by our international the IFA, but was to be born from the AF and gain its own autonomy. It had to provide a strong class-struggle perspective to provide a counter to the dominant feminist movement’s lack of liberatory potential. It also had to not only be inclusive to groups normally marginalized within the anarcha-feminist movement but also counter the prejudices they face. After some debate the federation reached a consensus of agreement to go forward and feelers were put out to other organisations.

Early on sibling federations throughout the IFA were keen to help, while here in Britain the SolFed joined and they made contact with their international federation the IWA. A meeting at 2013 London Anarchist Bookfair gathered support from independent anarcha-feminists, as did the creation of a web presence. After several months a consensus emerged on the criteria for organisation where those involved had to:

Agree to work towards implementing the collectively agreed decisions of the group

As planning went on things looked touch-and-go at times whether an event would be possible at all. New people got involved and others took breaks. Fundraising took place but money was short. Speakers and workshops started to came forward but then the programme had to be made to work. The inclusion policy was agreed along the lines of the form of oppression suffered which caused ripples in a field normally only looking purely to identity to give an indication of attendance. The safer spaces agreement was put in place and people needed to help on the day. Eventually everything started to come together.

Key to the whole event was the way in which different strands of the conference timetable would be given to groups usually marginalized within feminism (such as the disabled, sex workers, trans women, etc). This gave longer discussions over the course of the day about certain subjects, and it was hoped that this would highlight struggles from those who found their voices normally sidelined, vilified or lost entirely in feminist organising.

The day came and everything went past in a blur. Personally I spent the day either volunteering, supporting others, or helping to present the community accountability strand so I’m going to leave the nitty gritty of reviewing the strands to those who were there purely as attendees This was the first time something like this had been attempted and it was all a bit experimental – but if we are ever to succeed in our goal of social revolution we have to be brave and try stuff. I think AFem did that and made a success of it all, though not everything was perfect.

I’ve also not kept up with the internet feedback but I know there has been moaning online. I find forums are a draining, negative space, and hearing that folks were griping (often folks who were not even in attendance), I haven’t gone to look for it yet – that can wait until I’m more rested. On the other hand I spent the days following AFem hopping between different people who had been in attendance. The feedback I’ve been getting in person has been overwhelmingly positive. One person said it was best anarcha feminist event they had attended (and they were not green in this kind of thing). All of them gave feedback of negative points, but it was fell into fairly similar areas, constructively phrased, and the positives were overwhelming to them. A quick rundown these:

+ Big open/close
Folks loved the opening and closing sessions which gathered everybody in attendance together and were kept on track by the organisers. The way people set goals for the day meant there was a collective feeling of active participation expected from folks attending.+ Developing ideas
Everyone I talked to had learned new ideas and methods to take back home, and many otherwise liberal feminists were not only exposed to anarcha-feminism for the first time, but engaged and took away lessons from an anarchist perspective.+ Strands
The way in which strands were organised was loved by all. It led for more discussion and time to work on things. People said this was SO MUCH BETTER than how bookfairs and other conferences run their meetings and it rarely felt like you were just being talked to but were part of a discussion.+ Atmosphere
On the whole people found the atmosphere at the event to be positive and liberating, with people able to build solidarity against shared opression. ot only that but international links were forged and space for meeting other anarcha-feminists took place. They also commented on how easy it was to find organisers and volounteers, and upon how friendly and approachable they all were.+ Safer Spaces Policy
Every person commented that it was refreshing to see is attempting a safer space policy that goes far beyond what most conferences would do, and think we have struck some new ground in how this could be put in place at similar events, though some areas do need development.+ Self Care
Food Not Bombs provided lunch for anyone who was skint and was loved by all. At the same time a decent quiet space and the readily available interpretation and safer space volunteers made everything a lot more manageable.+ Internationalism
The international aspect was seen as being vital to the experience, with at least 19 different countries represented in attendance, and something others would hope to see us expand.+ Enthusiasm to continue
Overwhelmingly people wanted to see this happen again, if not next year then in 2016.

The constructive criticisms raised to me were:

– Time table clashes
These can almost never be avoided, and people acknowledged this, but at the same time everyone said there was some clash at some time for them. We tried the best we could but always worth keeping this in mind.– TERF infestation
A group of trans exclusionary radical feminists (known as TERFs for short) tried to undermine the event. Someone who had been on the organiser list from the start lied about their willingness to uphold the inclusion policy to other organisers. They then positioned themselves to help present the Introduction to Anarcha-Feminism where they went off the presentation planned with the co-facilitator in order to spout some transphobic bile. At the same time they were seen conferring with other terfs before they dispersed into each session and parrot the same transphobic talking points, and appeared to be using the quiet space to regroup and plan. Attempts were made to remove the TERFs by some of the organisers but this unity was undermined and they used the confusion caused by sabotage of the consensus we had otherwise forged for the event to hang about. Despite this betrayal and sabotage, everyone I talked with found that any move towards transphobic discussion was quickly shut down and made unwelcome, and that the issue was handled better than most events. However, there was still a lack of consistency on how those breaking with the safer spaces agreement were dealt with.– Cultural appropriation/racism
Lots of white people turned up using fashion displays from cultures that had been othered by white imperialism with no respect for the cultures they were came from and then got defensive when this was fed back in a negative light by the POC strand. Again, while the safer space policy had words on this subject we didn’t have a consistent process on what we were actually doing about it.– Lack of resources
We didn’t have enough full programmes for the attendees (though everyone did get a timetable), and while we had people on hand to read out the timetable we did not have large print versions. This was a major slip up and something that I will not be repeated.

On the TERF gang, it is unfortunate that but not surprising that they would go to such lengths to try and ruin the event. However if after a year of planning the best they could manage was to get one person to lie about their intentions and then protect the five or six die-hards that came along in the center of London then they have played what may be their hardest hitting attempt to disrupt at a time where the conference was vulnerable and gone home with plumbs. The problems that have been highlighted have came with constructive suggestions for improvement and the organising group are already moving forward with these, thought we are going to need to take a wee break before launching into any serious planning.

AFem has now been fully realized as its own organisational entity, separate to the groups that nurtured it early on. As a member of the AF this is a key example of the worth of the federation, and illustrates the way in which anarchist organisations differ from their authoritarian counterparts. Where others would use this as a front group and co-opt the struggles of others for self gain, anarchists work to create mutual aid and forge solidarity between truly autonomous groups, with struggles directed by those who are oppressed. I have every confidence that this has been the start of an ongoing series of truly international events to build a modern anarcha-feminist practice and will start to ensure that anarcha-feminism is central to anything that could be regarded today as anarchist practice. As such, the last thing to say is a big thanks to everyone who contributed to making AFem 2014 a resounding success. Thank you all!

Leo Igwe is a skeptical activist and human rights advocate from Nigeria, and is a former representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He has bravely worked to end a variety of human rights violations, including homophobia, sorcery, witchcraft, ritual killing, human sacrifice, “untouchability”, caste discrimination, “child witch” superstition, and anti-blasphemy laws. He is presently enrolled in a three year research programme on “Witchcraft accusations in Africa” at the University of Bayreuth, in Germany.

Doors open at 19:00, for a start at 19:30.

Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately,

The next in a series of meetings to form a social centre collective. After our last meet we decided that all members of the collective would work towards a shared set of aims & principles (both in terms of the ideals of any project we undertake and the physical requirements of such a project) and work towards a shared safer space policy that every collective member would actively work to uphold.

This meeting looks to carry on the conversation about what these will all look like.

The author John Barker will read from his recently published novel Futures (PM Press, 2014). He will be joined by Glasgow-based writer, Bechaela Walker, reading from her recent work. The readings will be followed by a discussion on the nature and possibilities of ‘political fiction’. This will encompass questioning the very nature of political fiction; varieties of such work; and an estimate of what such fiction can do that other writing, whether reportage, theory, history or philosophy cannot do. Despite all the sociological analysis of people’s limited time in the internet age, does political fiction ‘reach places other writing cannot’? Writers, readers and anyone with an interest in such questions are welcome.

John Barker was born in London in 1948. In 1969, along with six others, he ripped up his Cambridge University Finals papers as part of a campaign against education as a system of exclusion. In 1972, in what was called the Angry Brigade trial, he was convicted with three others of conspiring to cause explosions. He served a ten-year prison sentence. A crafted memoir of this internment, Bending the Bars, was published many years later. He worked as a dustman and welder before being implicated in a conspiracy to import cannabis in 1986. In 1990 he was finally arrested and served a five-year sentence. Since then he has worked constantly as a writer and book indexer.

“In this fast-paced, streetwise take on eighties London, boundaries blur between the cocaine trade and newly deregulated financial markets. High and low life don’t look so different, as everyone tries to make a killing. Barker’s portrait of a cynical, money-hungry culture skewers a moment in history that for good or ill (and mostly for ill) made Britain what it is today”. Hari Kunzru, The Impressionist

Why does it seem like every other day we hear news about another scandal: banks fixing interest rate; mortgage companies giving loans to those who can’t afford them; investment firms scamming their investors; and corporations covering up evidence of profiting from crime. The above are just some of the more recent stories we’ve all heard.

This presents a challenge to psychologists – how can we understand and explain how so many people commit obviously immoral acts?

Adam will dissect a number of famous cases of corporate violence and corruption, focusing on the elements they share in common, and argue that otherwise normal people can easily become co-conspirators in horrifyingly immoral actions.

Dr Adam Moore received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2011, where his work focused on developing a computational model of the cognitive processes underlying moral judgement. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Advanced Brain Imaging, at the Georgia Institute for Technology, where he conducted neuroimaging investigations into self-control, working memory, and attentional focus. He accepted a faculty position at the University of Edinburgh in 2012, where he continues to research judgement and decision making, moral psychology, and human cognition. Adam spoke to Glasgow Skeptics in December 2013, in a talk titled, “Moral Judgment and Moral Emotion: What Have We Learned About Mass Atrocity?”

Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately, this leaves the basement inaccessible to most wheelchair users.

Recent media coverage of high profile sexual abuse cases prompted some commentators to question if we are witnessing a ‘moral panic’ in relation to sexual abuse. Join us for presentations and debate about the implications of framing sexual abuse in these terms for survivors, practitioners and researchers.

This half day seminar organised by the Gender Based Violence Research Network is free to attend, but places are limited.

On Thursday 30th October the Old Hairdressers will be hosting a meeting for punks and other musical miscreants interested in discussing ideas for the creation of new DIY spaces for practice, performance and connected activities in Glasgow. Inspired by recent developments in England such as JT Soar and DIY Space For London, as well as the long-standing European autonomous centre model(s), the evening will be an opportunity to put forward proposals, consider practicalities, make connections with like-minded people, and most importantly to form plans of action to live up to those three letters we hold so dear.

Prior to the discussion, we’re hoping to be able to screen NO FUN CITY (2010, 84 mins). The film documents the Vancouver punk scene’s fight to sustain itself in the context of and in opposition to local bureaucracy and creeping gentrification, themes particularly pertinent to our own fair city.

Closing off the night will be DJs and a performance from BLACK COP on the first date of their European ‘fact-finding mission’. Afficianados of all things angry will be as equally enthused as doyens of daft dancing by this tour-de-force of whirlwind hardcore punk.

Doors 7pm, film screening begins 7.30pm
Suggested donation £3

All money received after costs will be donated to the Unity Centre, which provides practical solidarity and support for asylum seekers in Glasgow (for more information see http://unitycentreglasgow.org/)

The housing monster’s voracious appetite for land and rent has pushed the cost of living to breaking point. In Glasgow, public housing has been eradicated since stock transfer in 2003. Rents in the ‘social housing’ sector inexorably move closer to private-market levels. Mortgage rates continue to rise disproportionately to people’s income, and housing is the staple ingredient of the debt-based economy. Yet ‘the housing question’ seems strangely absent from current debates. This event places housing at the front of the agenda, creating a forum for debate, discussion, and resistance.

The day will comprise three films on housing which will be used to prompt discussion about the current state of housing in the UK, and Scotland more specifically. In the morning we will discuss the current (miserable) state of housing across tenures and in the afternoon we will discuss the forms of organisation around housing that might be possible or desirable in the current era.

We want to engage with a range of different groups. Not with the intention of generating a false unity, but with the hope that we can learn from each others’ struggles through discussion and find ways to challenge the housing monster in the present and future. It is our contention that these struggles will have to be undertaken at a range of different levels and that a plurality of struggles, both defensive and offensive, is welcome and necessary. All those with similar interests are warmly invited.

Hope you have had a good weekend! This week sees another step towards the formation of a new social centre collective, so if that takes your fancy then take a look at Thursday’s events. Before I get into the events listing we also received the following notice that may be of interest to some folks:

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A New Initiative for Free Information

– Do you want access to academic articles, chapters, etc. but don’t have the right credentials? Please send an info request with as much detail as possible (preferably link to journal article, bibliography details, etc) and we’ll download and send it back to ya. If you need it asap, please include that. Otherwise requests will be responded to on a monthly basis.

– Do you have access to information and want to spread the love? Get on board with Robin Academia. Send an email & we can hopefully build a wee network of access/downloads/printing.

We should be able to access most databases. If more people get involved, we can spread the access like yummy lemon curd toast. I AM HERE TO BE USED. If you have info on what is available to academic students/staff but not to you, get in touch and let’s find ways round things.

Send all thoughts and queries to robinacademia@gmail.com. Oh, and dinna tell the academy please.

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Sounds like a worthy cause, and one I hope gets plenty of support. Now on with the events listing!

The next in a series of meetings to form a social centre collective. After our last meet we decided that all members of the collective would work towards a shared set of aims & principles (both in terms of the ideals of any project we undertake and the physical requirements of such a project) and work towards a shared safer space policy that every collective member would actively work to uphold.

This meeting looks to carry on the conversation about what these will all look like.

Ever wanted to try Parkour? Come along to Glasgow Parkour Coaching’s monthly Parkour taster this Thursday! This sessions of for Beginners only and is a chance to get a taste of what goes on at our weekly adult classes.

Thursday, October 9 at 8:00pm
McChuills, 40 High Street, G1 1NL
Come, have a drink, and listen to some great fucking people do their great fucking things.

Our hearts may feel like the lyrics of a Cranberries song, but the beer still flows, the words still roll, and the beat will go on and on and on and on…

JUANA ADCOCK will share the power of her words

Glasgow’s finest MAGI GIBSON will spill her thoughts

the long awaited return of TICKLE (do I need to say more?)

we’ll end the night with a psyche disc spinning set from NEIL DONALDSON

is any night complete without BECCI WALLACE? Naw. So we’re lucky to have her hosting our band of trouble makers.

As always, it’s free entry. Though our artists do need fed, so if ye can, chuck £3 in the bucket.

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RiB at Document
Saturday, October 11 at 12:00pm until late
CCA, 350 Sauchiehall St, G2 3JD

The Radical Independent Bookfair will be doing a one day stall this year at our favourite human rights documentary film festival. We will be located up in the balcony. Setting up in the morning for a lunchtime opening we will likely be open till after the last film comes out.

BERLIN In the last years the capital has changed a lot. Flats that once were unattractive are now being used as secure investment objects. The transformation into owner-occupied flats and massive rent increases become an everyday phenomenon. The visible tenant protests in the vibrant metropolis of Berlin are a reaction to the growing shortage of affordable housing.
The movie is a kaleidoscope of the tenants’ struggles in Berlin against their displacement out of their neighbourhood communities. Ranging from the occupation of the Berlin town hall to a camp at Kottbusser Tor, the organised prevention of evictions and the struggle of senior citizens for their community center and age-appropriate flats, a new urban protest movement is on the rise.

A documentary by
Gertrud Schulte Westenberg and Matthias Coers
D 2014 | 78 min. | German with English subtitles

We would like to mobilize people from radical housing groups in Glasgow to join the screening and to have a common discussion afterwards on the topic and possible cooperation in resistance against inhumane housing policies.

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Spirit of Revolt Archive and The Common Good @ Document 12
Saturday, October 11 at 12:00pm onwards
CCA, 350 Sauchiehall St, G2 3JD

Spirit of Revolt archive collective will show their display on the Con&Wealth
along side a short film, chat and mini exhibition about the
Spirit of Revolt.

SOR set up 2 years ago and is an important project to come out of the Glasgow.
As an archive of dissent it digs up and preserves Glasgow’s,Clydeside’s and
wider Anarchist and Libertarian-Socialist past and present. The everyday
struggle for a fairer life has industrial and cultural activism at heart, a
colourful and empowering history. Come and find out what SOR does and how you
could turn Glasgow’s radical history into useful tools for future action.

Common Good Awareness Project will present a film and discussion in the
Electron Club (Film 2:00pm Discussion 3:00pm).

The film was made to create awareness and understanding of the Common Good,
and to support the Portobello Park campaign, where a dangerous president
through the use of private bills could have a devastating effect on Common
Good assets across the country.

We will be discussing 3 aspects concerning Common Good:

1. Scotland’s Common Good Fund is 500 years of our common stuff! Our publicly owned assets preserved from across Scotland are now worth tens of millions of pounds. But their value has dwindled mostly due to mismanagement of the fund, by elected city councillors who are its stewards. We believe these assets, part of our working class history, should be used for us – as a social networking tool across the country, to help empower communities, particularly young folk, who will lose most if these assets are allowed to conveniently disappear.

2. The Farmhouse The farmhouse is an old building in Elder Park, Govan and is part of the Common Good Fund. By being transformed into an independent resource centre by us, we are creating a template for Scotland, showing others how to identify and bring Common Good assets back into community use.

3. Participatory Action Research The Farmhouse Project involves everyone from planning it, building skills as well as deciding how the resource will be used. By practising new skills like filming, audio, interviewing, presenting and documentation the project will capture key interests and concerns. Our local issues are actually city wide so the research could be spread across the city. Come and find out how we will do this.

The recent development of a range of technologies for genetic modification of animals means that the possibility of genetically modified farm animals being licensed for human consumption is getting closer. What are these technologies, and what are the applications that are being developed? The current regulations for licensing GM animals for food, including the differences between assessing GM animals and plants, will be discussed. Many of the objections to the use of GM technologies relate to societal issues rather than technological risks, so how does this relate to possible introduction of GM animals for food?

Professor Helen Sang was born in Edinburgh but went to high school in Brighton. She is a geneticist and molecular biologist, with a degree and PhD from Cambridge University. She continued her research career with postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard and Edinburgh universities. Since the 1980s, she has led a research group at the Roslin Institute (famous as the home of Dolly the sheep), with a research goal to develop methods for genetic modification of chickens with applications in basic biomedical research and for improving chicken breeds, particularly for enhancing resistance to major diseases including bird flu.

Doors open at 19:00 for a start at 19:30 sharp.
FREE

Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately, this leaves the basement inaccessible to most wheelchair users.

**********

Spanish Civil War in Cinema: Book Launch and Screening
Tuesday, October 14 at 8:30pm
Glasgow Film Theatre, 12 Rose Street, G3 6RB

Come and mark the publication of the paperback edition of The War That Won’t Die: The Spanish Civil War in Cinema with a screening of El espinazo del Diablo/The Devil’s Backbone. Del Toro’s first cinematic engagement with the civil war draws heavily on El espíritu de la colmena, which I screened to mark the hardback. There will be wine after. All welcome.

Leo Igwe is a skeptical activist and human rights advocate from Nigeria, and is a former representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He has bravely worked to end a variety of human rights violations, including homophobia, sorcery, witchcraft, ritual killing, human sacrifice, “untouchability”, caste discrimination, “child witch” superstition, and anti-blasphemy laws. He is presently enrolled in a three year research programme on “Witchcraft accusations in Africa” at the University of Bayreuth, in Germany.

Doors open at 19:00, for a start at 19:30.

Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately,

Why does it seem like every other day we hear news about another scandal: banks fixing interest rate; mortgage companies giving loans to those who can’t afford them; investment firms scamming their investors; and corporations covering up evidence of profiting from crime. The above are just some of the more recent stories we’ve all heard.

This presents a challenge to psychologists – how can we understand and explain how so many people commit obviously immoral acts?

Adam will dissect a number of famous cases of corporate violence and corruption, focusing on the elements they share in common, and argue that otherwise normal people can easily become co-conspirators in horrifyingly immoral actions.

Dr Adam Moore received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2011, where his work focused on developing a computational model of the cognitive processes underlying moral judgement. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Advanced Brain Imaging, at the Georgia Institute for Technology, where he conducted neuroimaging investigations into self-control, working memory, and attentional focus. He accepted a faculty position at the University of Edinburgh in 2012, where he continues to research judgement and decision making, moral psychology, and human cognition. Adam spoke to Glasgow Skeptics in December 2013, in a talk titled, “Moral Judgment and Moral Emotion: What Have We Learned About Mass Atrocity?”

Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately, this leaves the basement inaccessible to most wheelchair users.

Recent media coverage of high profile sexual abuse cases prompted some commentators to question if we are witnessing a ‘moral panic’ in relation to sexual abuse. Join us for presentations and debate about the implications of framing sexual abuse in these terms for survivors, practitioners and researchers.

This half day seminar organised by the Gender Based Violence Research Network is free to attend, but places are limited.

After a rather busy week we have a few more events coming up that may be of interest. Arika will be finishing up their weekend of events with a day of interesting performance and presentation at the Tramway. On the 1st there is an open day for volunteering at the Unity Night Shelter as well as a night of silent films at the Panopticon music hall. Also worth keeping in mind that the Document film festival is coming up soon, keep an eye on it here: http://documentfilmfestival.org/12/

So without further ado…

**********

Episode 6: Make a Way Out of No Way – Arika
Sunday, September 28 at 2:00pm – 11:00pm
Tramway, 25 Albert Drive, G41 2PE

Day Three of Episode 6 (Fri 26 – Sun 28 Sept) looks at the art and politics of wayward communities who refuse to be bound by the fictions of race and sex over 3 days of performance, screenings and discussion at Tramway.

How are categories of race, sex, sexuality, gender and class mobilised to criminalise communities and create and maintain such carceral spaces? And how are people organising in realisation that it is not enough to work to reform the system, but that the system itself is the problem? Reina Gossett is Activist-In-Residence at Barnard College’s Center for Research on Women. Saidiya Hartman is a leading cultural critic and writer on blackness and slavery. Charlene Sinclair is the Director of Centre for Race, Religion and Economic Democracy at Union Theological Seminary.http://arika.org.uk/events/episode-6-make-way-out-no-way/programme/subjection-subjection

Dreams are Colder than Death – Arthur Jafa
16:45 – 18:00

Using a range of tactics that resist the white cinematic gaze, Arthur Jafa’s most recent film asks what it means to be black in America in the 21st century. Grounded not in sequence but in the interrelation of a constellation of voices, bodies and images, the film maps out black relationships with early and frequent death, with violence, with fantasy, with love and with memory, assembled from footage of Charles Burnett, Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Portia Jordan and Storyboard P, poet Fred Moten, and of everyday black life.http://arika.org.uk/events/episode-6-make-way-out-no-way/programme/dreams-are-colder-death

Black, queer and trans bodies tell stories. Often they are multilingual – talking to numerous cultures, telling many stories simultaneously. Portraying a sense of ‘realness’, conforming to a set of socially prescribed norms so that you can walk streets safely, is self-defence. Ayana Christian and Michael Garçon are both leaders in the Ballroom community. Reina Gossett works at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. Charlene Sinclair is the Director of Centre for Race, Religion and Economic Democracy. Fred is one of the great poets, and theorists of blackness and fugitivity.http://arika.org.uk/events/episode-6-make-way-out-no-way/programme/realness

Fred Moten and Miss Prissy – Mutual Instruments
22:00 – 22:30

How might you un-sensationalize yourself? How does the voice or the body remember having been moved by others, with others? How might it feel at ease with the fugitive, at peace with the pursued, at rest with the ones who consent not to be one? Can our favourite Vegas-born poet of prophetic blackness and a South Central transmuter of social rage into beauty feel through each other?http://arika.org.uk/events/episode-6-make-way-out-no-way/programme/mutual-instruments

Access with a £6 Sunday Day Pass or with a £14 Festival Pass.

Also this day:
Dance Workshop with Miss Prissy and Glasgow Open Dance School
11:00 – 13:00

A movement-based workshop with Miss Prissy and Glasgow Open Dance School What are the politics of how we teach, learn and listen with our bodies? How can dancing be a form of activism within a community? What are the experiences of women within an artform like Krump, which is often thought of as male dominated, or aggressive?

This workshop is free, and no dance experience is necessary. However, at present it is currently fully booked. If you would like to be added to the waiting list email emilia@arika.org.uk

We’ll be doing Facebook event pages for each of the days of the Episode – Fri 26, Sat 27 and Sun 28.

Just over 95% of our universe comes in the shrouded form of dark energy and matter that we can neither explain nor directly detect. Together, these two dark entities play out a cosmic battle of epic proportions. While the gravity of dark matter slowly pulls structures in the universe together, dark energy fuels the universes accelerated expansion, making it ever harder for those structures to grow. Catherine Heymans has used the world’s best telescopes to map out the invisible dark matter in our Universe and confront different theories on the dark universe. She will explore this dark enigma and describe where we will look next in our search for darkness. It is widely believed that in order to truely understand the dark universe we will need to invoke some new physics that will forever change our cosmic view.

Catherine Heymans is a Reader in Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, a European Research Council Fellow and a member of the Young Academy of Scotland. She specialises in observing the dark side of our Universe and co-leads the European Southern Observatory KiDS analysis team, using deep sky observations to test whether we need to go beyond Einstein with our current theory of gravity. Since completing her PhD at Oxford University in 2003, Catherine has held fellowships from the Max-Planck Institute and the Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics. When she is not busy unveiling the mysteries of the Universe or enthusiastically lecturing undergraduates, she can usually be found building sandcastles and paddling in the sea with her three small children.

Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately, this leaves the basement inaccessible to most wheelchair uses.

**********

Night Shelter Volunteer Recruitment Open Day
Wednesday, October 1 at 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Contact glasgownightshelter@gmail.com for full info

On Wednesday 1st October we’re planning a Volunteer Recruitment Open Day at the Night Shelter for people to come and find out a bit more about volunteering at the night shelter.

There’ll be a tour of the shelter as well as people talking about their experiences of volunteering as well as some of the men who stay at the shelter explaining what the shelter means to them.

It will be an ideal opportunity for anyone who has thought about volunteering at the night shelter to find out more about what it is like and what volunteering at the shelter involves.

**********

Silent Films at the Panopticon
Wednesday, October 1 at 6:30pm
The Britannia Panopticon Music Hallm 113-117 Trongate, G1 5HD

Did you know Glasgow is home to the world’s oldest surviving music hall, erected in 1857?

Did you also know they’re hosting a FREE evening of old Chaplin and Georges Melies films (Melies being a pioneer of cinematic special effects best known for “that music video Smashing Pumpkins did on Melancholy And The Infinite Sadness”)?

The next in a series of meetings to form a social centre collective. After our last meet we decided that all members of the collective would work towards a shared set of aims & principles (both in terms of the ideals of any project we undertake and the physical requirements of such a project) and work towards a shared safer space policy that every collective member would actively work to uphold.

This meeting looks to carry on the conversation about what these will all look like.

**********

RiB at Document
Saturday, October 11 at 12:00pm until late
CCA, 350 Sauchiehall St, G2 3JD

The Radical Independent Bookfair will be doing a one day stall this year at our favourite human rights documentary film festival. We will be located up in the balcony. Setting up in the morning for a lunchtime opening we will likely be open till after the last film comes out.

Spirit Of Revolt (SoR) Short film, chat and mini exhibition about the
Spirit of Revolt. SOR set up 2 years ago and is an important project
to come out of the Glasgow. As an archive of dissent it digs up and
preserves Glasgow’s,Clydeside’s and wider Anarchist and
Libertarian-Socialist past and present. The everyday struggle for a
fairer life has industrial and cultural activism at heart, a
colourful and empowering history. Come and find out what SOR does and
how you could turn Glasgow’s radical history into useful tools for
future action.

Common Good Awareness Project. Film and discussion Electron Club
Film 2:00 Discussion 3:00 Saturday 11th

The film was made to create awareness and understanding of the
Common Good, and to support the Portobello Park campaign, where a
dangerous president through the use of private bills could have a
devastating effect on Common Good assets across the country.

We will be discussing 3 aspects concerning Common Good:

1. Scotland’s Common Good Fund is 500 years of our common stuff! Our
publicly owned assets preserved from across Scotland are now worth
tens of millions of pounds. But their value has dwindled mostly due
to mismanagement of the fund, by elected city councillors who are
its stewards. We believe these assets, part of our working class
history, should be used for us – as a social networking tool across
the country, to help empower communities, particularly young folk,
who will lose most if these assets are allowed to conveniently
disappear.

2. The Farmhouse The farmhouse is an old building in Elder Park,
Govan and is part of the Common Good Fund. By being transformed into
an independent resource centre by us, we are creating a template
for Scotland, showing others how to identify and bring Common Good
assets back into community use.

3. Participatory Action Research The Farmhouse Project involves
everyone from planning it, building skills as well as deciding how
the resource will be used. By practicing new skills like filming,
audio, interviewing, presenting and documentation the project will
capture key interests and concerns. Our local issues are actually
city wide so the research could be spread across the city. Come and
find out how we will do this.

The recent development of a range of technologies for genetic modification of animals means that the possibility of genetically modified farm animals being licensed for human consumption is getting closer. What are these technologies, and what are the applications that are being developed? The current regulations for licensing GM animals for food, including the differences between assessing GM animals and plants, will be discussed. Many of the objections to the use of GM technologies relate to societal issues rather than technological risks, so how does this relate to possible introduction of GM animals for food?

Professor Helen Sang was born in Edinburgh but went to high school in Brighton. She is a geneticist and molecular biologist, with a degree and PhD from Cambridge University. She continued her research career with postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard and Edinburgh universities. Since the 1980s, she has led a research group at the Roslin Institute (famous as the home of Dolly the sheep), with a research goal to develop methods for genetic modification of chickens with applications in basic biomedical research and for improving chicken breeds, particularly for enhancing resistance to major diseases including bird flu.

Doors open at 19:00 for a start at 19:30 sharp.
FREE

Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately, this leaves the basement inaccessible to most wheelchair users.

An interesting week in politics. We’ve had a spike in interest in this list over the past week. You can find the details on how to sign up at the bottom of this mail, so if you know anyone looking to find out about events in Glasgow be sure to pass it along.

Many conversations I’ve had have turned to which groups are active in Glasgow at the moment. While we will not know everything going on we do keep a list on this site, so check it out!

Upcoming events of note include the Unity Night Shelter volunteer recruitment open day and the meeting to form a new collective with the long-term goal of opening a social centre in Glasgow (think something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_center)

The discovery of the Higgs boson was the culmination of the largest scientific experiment ever performed, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

But what really is a Higgs boson and what does it do? How was it found? And how has its discovery changed our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature?

Jon Butterworth is a professor of physics at University College London. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group on the Atlas experiment at Cern’s Large Hadron Collider and also manages to write regularly in The Guardian, as well as taking part in other science communication.

His book, Smashing Physics: The Inside Story of the Hunt for the Higgs,was published in May 2014.

**********

A NIGHT IN THE WILD!
Friday, September 26 – Monday, September 29
Sallochy Woodlands

Do you have what it takes to spend a night or two sleeping rough in the wild? Take part in our sponsored camping weekend. Participants will be provided with a tent and pitch in Sallochy Woodlands. Minimum sponsorship of £50 to be raised by each participant. Maximum of 4 people to each tent. All money raised will go to charities supporting homeless people in Glasgow.

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ARIKA | Episode 6: Make A Way Out Of No Way
Friday, 26 – Sunday 29 September
Various

A 3-day exploration, through performance, screenings and discussion, of the art and politics of wayward communities who refuse to be bound by the fictions of race and sex.

Episode 6: Make a Way Out of No Way is about working class American dance (Krumping,Voguing), black poetry, queer counter-publics, cultural history and theology, ballroom & house music. It is in conversation with communities who challenge the prison industrial complex and who organise in the face of multiple oppressions. It features a queer operatic requiem, the greatest film in the African-American canon, and counter canonical impulses at the dawn of a singular black cinema. It is about the noise of black and/or queer sociality. And it asks whether it is possible for communities, even while so constrained, to practice being somewhere else – practically, socially and aesthetically making a way out of what is at hand and rehearsing in anticipation of what is to come.

“Waywardness is the refusal to be governed. It is the next phase of the general strike, the flight from the plantation and refusal of slavery and the demeaning conditions of work, this time it happens in the slum. It is a social experiment and an effort to elaborate new forms of existence.” Saidiya Hartman

Friday 26 Sept

Waywardness – Saidiya Hartman
The wayward create upheavals and incite tumult. They come and go as they please; they are riotous; they are itinerant and never settle; they are fugitive; they are excessive rather than efficient, they are in open rebellion against society. Saidiya’s keenly affecting and poetic writing is some of the most influential cultural criticism in America today, deeply concerned with the mental and physical traces bodies accumulate as they manoeuvre between terror and pleasure, power and flight.

Killer of Sheep – Dir: Charles Burnett, USA, 1977, 87 mins
Killer of Sheep is an undisputed masterpiece of African-American filmmaking. Filmed in the aftermath of the Los Angeles Watts Riots, with the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, it is one of the major films of the L.A. Rebellion. The film makes visible the struggle undertaken by black communities as they improvise themselves in relation to social conditions that seek to habituate depression and desensitization. It explores a space of numbing labour and insidiously enforced brutality – but also one of play, humour and love.

Make a Way Out of No Way: Club – MikeQ, Miss Prissy, Kia Labeija and the Legendary Pony Zion Garçon – Stereo
In which the crown prince of modern ballroom music, a master and rising star or Vogue, the Queen of Krump and hopefully you explore whether the club a world within a world? Can it be a space in which we can organise our bodies, our selves differently? Is it a space in which we might still be able to dance our way out of the time-traps and identity prisons we are locked in? What happens if we think of house music or social dance forms as ways to organize our bodies in relation to this quote from the Krumper Dragon – “most people think: they’re just a bunch of rowdy, ghetto, heathen thugs. No, what we are is oppressed”?

Saturday 27 Sept

Fugitivity and Waywardness – Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten
What are the politics of the wayward or fugitive, of self-defence, self-organisation and flight? What can we learn from runaway slaves, maroon societies and the underground railway, from queer counter-publics and from waywardness in Glasgow today? Fred is one of the great poets, educators and theorists of blackness and fugitivity. Saidiya’s book Scenes of Subjection is one of the most telling contributions to current black thought.

Touching the Imperceptible – Kara Keeling and Arthur Jafa
A performed constellation of voices and filmic fragments that might variously be about slipping into darkness or the (im)possibilities of being black…about cinematic, queer and black world-making and the similarities and differences therein…about Instagram and the acinematic… Kara Keeling is a leading thinker on what queer and/or black film might be, or become. Arthur Jafa is the most inventive, talkative improviser of the cinematic we’ve ever met.

Speculum Orum: Shackled to the Dead – M Lamar
Drawing on negro spirituals, Marion Williams, opera and Leontyne Price, M Lamar’s performances slide between noise and music, pain and truth. A 75-minute requiem that asks us to stay in the hold of the slave ship and that tries to understand the connection from the slave ship to the prison. Including movements from M Lamar’s “Surveillance Punishment and the Black Psyche” – an imprisoned black man’s reflections on his life sentenced to death for killing his male overseer and lover.

You’ve Never Seen Pain Expressed Like This – Miss Prissy, the Legendary Pony Zion Garçon, Kia Labeija and Danielle Goldman
A freestyle performed conversation for bodies and voices – on how Black, working class and queer dance is a way of moving in tight spaces and giving shape to oneself, of practicing and being ready for freedom. What’s political about American black, working class dance styles like Krump and Vogue? Do they practice moving in two worlds at the same time? With the Queen of Krump, the master of Vogue Femme Dramatics, the rising star of Vogue Women’s Performance and Danielle Goldman, writer on dance as politics.

Sunday 28 Sept

Workshop with Miss Prissy and Glasgow Open Dance School
A movement-based workshop on Krump and the politics of how we teach, learn and listen with our bodies.

From Subjection to Subjection – Reina Gossett, Saidiya Hartman and Charlene Sinclair
How are categories of race, sex, sexuality, gender and class mobilised to criminalise communities and create and maintain such carceral spaces? And how are people organising in realisation that it is not enough to work to reform the system, but that the system itself is the problem? Reina Gossett is Activist-In-Residence at Barnard College’s Center for Research on Women. Saidiya Hartman is a leading cultural critic. Charlene Sinclair is the Director of Centre for Race, Religion and Economic Democracy.

Dreams Are Colder Than Death – Dir: Arthur Jafa, USA, 2014, 52 mins
Using a range of tactics that resist the white cinematic gaze, Arthur Jafa’s most recent film asks what it means to be black in America in the 21st century. Grounded not in sequence but in the interrelation of a constellation of voices, bodies and images, the film maps out black relationships with early and frequent death, with violence, with fantasy, with love and with memory, assembled from interviews with Charles Burnett, Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Portia Jordan and Storyboard P.

Realness – Icon Ayana Christian, Legendary Co-Founder Michael Roberson Garçon, Reina Gossett, Fred Moten and Charlene Sinclair
What is at stake in the performance of realness and the practice of passing, and how are they both acts of survival and resistance? Black, queer and trans bodies tell stories. Often they are multilingual – talking to numerous cultures, telling many stories simultaneously. Portraying a sense of ‘realness’, conforming to a set of socially prescribed norms so that you can walk streets safely, is self-defence. Ayana Christian and Michael Garçon are both leaders in the Ballroom community.

Mutual Instruments – Fred Moten and Miss Prissy
What might be the capacity to feel through others, for others to feel through you – what is the feel for feeling others feeling you? How might you un-sensationalize yourself? How does the voice or the body remember having been moved by others, with others? How might it feel at ease with the fugitive, at peace with the pursued, at rest with the ones who consent not to be one? Can our favourite Vegas-born poet of prophetic blackness and a South Central transmuter of social rage into beauty feel through each other?

Top Glasgow musicians turn out to support communities fighting back against fracking. Appearing so far: George Tucker, The Lonesome Hearts, Willie and the Poorboys, the Carlton Jugband with special guest Carola Cosimini, Nicky Murray & Chloe Rodgers, Anti-fracking busker Alexander Mccallum. Compere: the incomparable Gary Little. Entry £10 on the door or buy in advance from http://www.brownpapertickets.com

Just over 95% of our universe comes in the shrouded form of dark energy and matter that we can neither explain nor directly detect. Together, these two dark entities play out a cosmic battle of epic proportions. While the gravity of dark matter slowly pulls structures in the universe together, dark energy fuels the universes accelerated expansion, making it ever harder for those structures to grow. Catherine Heymans has used the world’s best telescopes to map out the invisible dark matter in our Universe and confront different theories on the dark universe. She will explore this dark enigma and describe where we will look next in our search for darkness. It is widely believed that in order to truely understand the dark universe we will need to invoke some new physics that will forever change our cosmic view.

Catherine Heymans is a Reader in Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, a European Research Council Fellow and a member of the Young Academy of Scotland. She specialises in observing the dark side of our Universe and co-leads the European Southern Observatory KiDS analysis team, using deep sky observations to test whether we need to go beyond Einstein with our current theory of gravity. Since completing her PhD at Oxford University in 2003, Catherine has held fellowships from the Max-Planck Institute and the Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics. When she is not busy unveiling the mysteries of the Universe or enthusiastically lecturing undergraduates, she can usually be found building sandcastles and paddling in the sea with her three small children.

Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately, this leaves the basement inaccessible to most wheelchair uses.

**********

Night Shelter Volunteer Recruitment Open Day
Wednesday, October 1 at 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Contact glasgownightshelter@gmail.com for full info

On Wednesday 1st October we’re planning a Volunteer Recruitment Open Day at the Night Shelter for people to come and find out a bit more about volunteering at the night shelter.

There’ll be a tour of the shelter as well as people talking about their experiences of volunteering as well as some of the men who stay at the shelter explaining what the shelter means to them.

It will be an ideal opportunity for anyone who has thought about volunteering at the night shelter to find out more about what it is like and what volunteering at the shelter involves.

The next in a series of meetings to form a social centre collective. After our last meet we decided that all members of the collective would work towards a shared set of aims & principles (both in terms of the ideals of any project we undertake and the physical requirements of such a project) and work towards a shared safer space policy that every collective member would actively work to uphold.

This meeting looks to carry on the conversation about what these will all look like.

**********

RiB at Document
Saturday, October 11 at 12:00pm until late
CCA, 350 Sauchiehall St, G2 3JD

The Radical Independent Bookfair will be doing a one day stall this year at our favourite human rights documentary film festival. We will be located up in the balcony. Setting up in the morning for a lunchtime opening we will likely be open till after the last film comes out.

**********

Spirit of Revolt Archive and The Common Good @ Document 12
Saturday, October 11 at 12:00pm onwards
CCA, 350 Sauchiehall St, G2 3JD

Spirit of Revolt archive collective will show their display on the Con&Wealth along side a short film, chat and mini exhibition about the
Spirit of Revolt.

SOR set up 2 years ago and is an important project to come out of the Glasgow. As an archive of dissent it digs up and preserves Glasgow’s,Clydeside’s and wider Anarchist and Libertarian-Socialist past and present. The everyday struggle for a fairer life has industrial and cultural activism at heart, a colourful and empowering history. Come and find out what SOR does and how you could turn Glasgow’s radical history into useful tools for future action.

Common Good Awareness Project will present a film and discussion in the Electron Club (Film 2:00pm Discussion 3:00pm).

The film was made to create awareness and understanding of the Common Good, and to support the Portobello Park campaign, where a dangerous president through the use of private bills could have a devastating effect on Common Good assets across the country.

We will be discussing 3 aspects concerning Common Good:

1. Scotland’s Common Good Fund is 500 years of our common stuff! Our publicly owned assets preserved from across Scotland are now worth tens of millions of pounds. But their value has dwindled mostly due to mismanagement of the fund, by elected city councillors who are its stewards. We believe these assets, part of our working class history, should be used for us – as a social networking tool across the country, to help empower communities, particularly young folk, who will lose most if these assets are allowed to conveniently disappear.

2. The Farmhouse The farmhouse is an old building in Elder Park, Govan and is part of the Common Good Fund. By being transformed into an independent resource centre by us, we are creating a template for Scotland, showing others how to identify and bring Common Good assets back into community use.

3. Participatory Action Research The Farmhouse Project involves everyone from planning it, building skills as well as deciding how the resource will be used. By practising new skills like filming, audio, interviewing, presenting and documentation the project will capture key interests and concerns. Our local issues are actually city wide so the research could be spread across the city. Come and find out how we will do this.

The recent development of a range of technologies for genetic modification of animals means that the possibility of genetically modified farm animals being licensed for human consumption is getting closer. What are these technologies, and what are the applications that are being developed? The current regulations for licensing GM animals for food, including the differences between assessing GM animals and plants, will be discussed. Many of the objections to the use of GM technologies relate to societal issues rather than technological risks, so how does this relate to possible introduction of GM animals for food?

Professor Helen Sang was born in Edinburgh but went to high school in Brighton. She is a geneticist and molecular biologist, with a degree and PhD from Cambridge University. She continued her research career with postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard and Edinburgh universities. Since the 1980s, she has led a research group at the Roslin Institute (famous as the home of Dolly the sheep), with a research goal to develop methods for genetic modification of chickens with applications in basic biomedical research and for improving chicken breeds, particularly for enhancing resistance to major diseases including bird flu.

Doors open at 19:00 for a start at 19:30 sharp.
FREE

Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately, this leaves the basement inaccessible to most wheelchair users.

Another week and another set of events. If you pick this up quickly you will notice that there is a fundraiser for the Document Film Festival happening tonight. Over the next week the momentum carries on to form a new social centre collective (again the meeting is on a Tuesday but please note the change of venue and start time – Garnethill from 6). Also, this Wednesday, the next in our monthly discussion series will be taking a look at education from an anarchist perspective.

There is also a lot of other events to look at, so without further ado…

In just over a month Document Film Festival will kick off its 12th year at Glasgow’s CCA. With over 35 films, workshops, live music, visual installations and performances that explore global human rights injustices and video activism. But why wait to celebrate? On September 12 we’ll be at Stereo Cafe Bar putting on a pre-festival fundraiser and we’ve invited some of our favourite local musicians and DJs to come along to get you dancing!

We’ve got WOLF, Alarm Bells and Harsh Tug set to perform. There will be a raffle, festival swag and an all around good time to be had. Just to get you into the festival spirit.

After a wee break, Women*’s jam is back!
This month we’re at Rottenrow, at 1400. If you don;t know where that is, we’ll meet at Buchanan St subway station, at 1345, then we’ll head to Rottenrow.

The jam is free and open to women of all abilities and experience. So, even if it’s your first time, come along and have a jump!!

There will be a warm up together, maybe some games, and a wee conditioning session too! And our ADAPT qualified female coach will be there for support and guidance, if you need it!

Send a message to the Glasgow Parkour Girls facebook page if you have any questions about the jam.

See you there!!

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Glasgow Skeptics: The Next Five Years
Monday, September 15 at 7:00pm – 9:30pm
The Admiral Bar, 72a Waterloo Street, G2 7DA

Glasgow Skeptics has been going for five years now (and if you’ve not already RSVPed to our very special anniversary event, please do!https://www.facebook.com/events/1495028154042640/). Looking ahead to the future, we’d like to talk about the next five years.

What should skeptics care about? What should Glasgow Skeptics be doing, and what could we be doing better? Should there be more of a focus on raising public awareness? Should we focus on the evidence base for specific legislation being discussed? Are there areas that are crying out for a skeptical eye, that have so far been missed?

If you’ve never been along before, this might be the perfect time to say hello. Part open-mic night, part group discussion: come along and let us know what you want from the next five years of Glasgow Skeptics.

Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately, this leaves the basement inaccessible to most wheelchair users.

“There is no such thing as a neutral educational process. Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity to it, or it becomes “the practice of freedom,” the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.” – Paulo Freire

Anarchists have a long and illustrious history of involvement within education, with interventions in libertarian education as notable as Ferrer’s Escuela Moderna, and the Free Skools, right through into the contemporary spaces of Social Centres. As a movement, Anarchism has historically emphasised the importance of the role of education – whether as a domesticating tool of oppression or as a prefiguring and liberating force – with a concern rarely echoed in other political perspectives.

While naturally touching on some of that history, this talk will mainly be concerned with the understanding that radicalism presents us with a fundamentally educational space, and will consider this in light of the work of Paulo Freire, among others. Though identifying outside of the specific Anarchist tradition, Freire’s work within Popular Education can be easily understood as broadly libertarian, and with implications and prospects for Anarchism.

Though the talk will highlight the role of informal education, contributions and reflections on all modes are welcome and expected in the discussion following.

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Glasgow AF discussion group is open and free to all, however any donations towards costs will be appreciated. Tea/coffee/juice/biscuits will be provided free of charge. Our venue is accessible to wheelchairs/powerchairs. We will also have a book stall from the RiB project with books and other related material for sale. We ask that all those attending this event read the brief introduction to our safer spaces policy here: https://glasgowanarchists.wordpress.com/safer-spaces/

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Faslane Picnic
Saturday, September 20 at 12:00pm
Faslane Naval Base

On Saturday, September 20, the Scottish Peace Network will be holding a demonstration at Faslane Naval Base at 12 noon. After the demo we will be having a picnic so bring food. We will be at Faslane whether the referendum results. NO TO TRIDENT, NO TO NATO!

The discovery of the Higgs boson was the culmination of the largest scientific experiment ever performed, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

But what really is a Higgs boson and what does it do? How was it found? And how has its discovery changed our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature?

Jon Butterworth is a professor of physics at University College London. He is a member of the High Energy Physics group on the Atlas experiment at Cern’s Large Hadron Collider and also manages to write regularly in The Guardian, as well as taking part in other science communication.

His book, Smashing Physics: The Inside Story of the Hunt for the Higgs,was published in May 2014.

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A NIGHT IN THE WILD!
Friday, September 26 – Monday, September 29
Sallochy Woodlands

Do you have what it takes to spend a night or two sleeping rough in the wild? Take part in our sponsored camping weekend. Participants will be provided with a tent and pitch in Sallochy Woodlands. Minimum sponsorship of £50 to be raised by each participant. Maximum of 4 people to each tent. All money raised will go to charities supporting homeless people in Glasgow.

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ARIKA | Episode 6: Make A Way Out Of No Way
Friday, 26 – Sunday 29 September
Various

A 3-day exploration, through performance, screenings and discussion, of the art and politics of wayward communities who refuse to be bound by the fictions of race and sex.

Episode 6: Make a Way Out of No Way is about working class American dance (Krumping,Voguing), black poetry, queer counter-publics, cultural history and theology, ballroom & house music. It is in conversation with communities who challenge the prison industrial complex and who organise in the face of multiple oppressions. It features a queer operatic requiem, the greatest film in the African-American canon, and counter canonical impulses at the dawn of a singular black cinema. It is about the noise of black and/or queer sociality. And it asks whether it is possible for communities, even while so constrained, to practice being somewhere else – practically, socially and aesthetically making a way out of what is at hand and rehearsing in anticipation of what is to come.

“Waywardness is the refusal to be governed. It is the next phase of the general strike, the flight from the plantation and refusal of slavery and the demeaning conditions of work, this time it happens in the slum. It is a social experiment and an effort to elaborate new forms of existence.” Saidiya Hartman

Friday 26 Sept

Waywardness – Saidiya Hartman
The wayward create upheavals and incite tumult. They come and go as they please; they are riotous; they are itinerant and never settle; they are fugitive; they are excessive rather than efficient, they are in open rebellion against society. Saidiya’s keenly affecting and poetic writing is some of the most influential cultural criticism in America today, deeply concerned with the mental and physical traces bodies accumulate as they manoeuvre between terror and pleasure, power and flight.

Killer of Sheep – Dir: Charles Burnett, USA, 1977, 87 mins
Killer of Sheep is an undisputed masterpiece of African-American filmmaking. Filmed in the aftermath of the Los Angeles Watts Riots, with the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, it is one of the major films of the L.A. Rebellion. The film makes visible the struggle undertaken by black communities as they improvise themselves in relation to social conditions that seek to habituate depression and desensitization. It explores a space of numbing labour and insidiously enforced brutality – but also one of play, humour and love.

Make a Way Out of No Way: Club – MikeQ, Miss Prissy, Kia Labeija and the Legendary Pony Zion Garçon – Stereo
In which the crown prince of modern ballroom music, a master and rising star or Vogue, the Queen of Krump and hopefully you explore whether the club a world within a world? Can it be a space in which we can organise our bodies, our selves differently? Is it a space in which we might still be able to dance our way out of the time-traps and identity prisons we are locked in? What happens if we think of house music or social dance forms as ways to organize our bodies in relation to this quote from the Krumper Dragon – “most people think: they’re just a bunch of rowdy, ghetto, heathen thugs. No, what we are is oppressed”?

Saturday 27 Sept

Fugitivity and Waywardness – Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten
What are the politics of the wayward or fugitive, of self-defence, self-organisation and flight? What can we learn from runaway slaves, maroon societies and the underground railway, from queer counter-publics and from waywardness in Glasgow today? Fred is one of the great poets, educators and theorists of blackness and fugitivity. Saidiya’s book Scenes of Subjection is one of the most telling contributions to current black thought.

Touching the Imperceptible – Kara Keeling and Arthur Jafa
A performed constellation of voices and filmic fragments that might variously be about slipping into darkness or the (im)possibilities of being black…about cinematic, queer and black world-making and the similarities and differences therein…about Instagram and the acinematic… Kara Keeling is a leading thinker on what queer and/or black film might be, or become. Arthur Jafa is the most inventive, talkative improviser of the cinematic we’ve ever met.

Speculum Orum: Shackled to the Dead – M Lamar
Drawing on negro spirituals, Marion Williams, opera and Leontyne Price, M Lamar’s performances slide between noise and music, pain and truth. A 75-minute requiem that asks us to stay in the hold of the slave ship and that tries to understand the connection from the slave ship to the prison. Including movements from M Lamar’s “Surveillance Punishment and the Black Psyche” – an imprisoned black man’s reflections on his life sentenced to death for killing his male overseer and lover.

You’ve Never Seen Pain Expressed Like This – Miss Prissy, the Legendary Pony Zion Garçon, Kia Labeija and Danielle Goldman
A freestyle performed conversation for bodies and voices – on how Black, working class and queer dance is a way of moving in tight spaces and giving shape to oneself, of practicing and being ready for freedom. What’s political about American black, working class dance styles like Krump and Vogue? Do they practice moving in two worlds at the same time? With the Queen of Krump, the master of Vogue Femme Dramatics, the rising star of Vogue Women’s Performance and Danielle Goldman, writer on dance as politics.

Sunday 28 Sept

Workshop with Miss Prissy and Glasgow Open Dance School
A movement-based workshop on Krump and the politics of how we teach, learn and listen with our bodies.

From Subjection to Subjection – Reina Gossett, Saidiya Hartman and Charlene Sinclair
How are categories of race, sex, sexuality, gender and class mobilised to criminalise communities and create and maintain such carceral spaces? And how are people organising in realisation that it is not enough to work to reform the system, but that the system itself is the problem? Reina Gossett is Activist-In-Residence at Barnard College’s Center for Research on Women. Saidiya Hartman is a leading cultural critic. Charlene Sinclair is the Director of Centre for Race, Religion and Economic Democracy.

Dreams Are Colder Than Death – Dir: Arthur Jafa, USA, 2014, 52 mins
Using a range of tactics that resist the white cinematic gaze, Arthur Jafa’s most recent film asks what it means to be black in America in the 21st century. Grounded not in sequence but in the interrelation of a constellation of voices, bodies and images, the film maps out black relationships with early and frequent death, with violence, with fantasy, with love and with memory, assembled from interviews with Charles Burnett, Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Portia Jordan and Storyboard P.

Realness – Icon Ayana Christian, Legendary Co-Founder Michael Roberson Garçon, Reina Gossett, Fred Moten and Charlene Sinclair
What is at stake in the performance of realness and the practice of passing, and how are they both acts of survival and resistance? Black, queer and trans bodies tell stories. Often they are multilingual – talking to numerous cultures, telling many stories simultaneously. Portraying a sense of ‘realness’, conforming to a set of socially prescribed norms so that you can walk streets safely, is self-defence. Ayana Christian and Michael Garçon are both leaders in the Ballroom community.

Mutual Instruments – Fred Moten and Miss Prissy
What might be the capacity to feel through others, for others to feel through you – what is the feel for feeling others feeling you? How might you un-sensationalize yourself? How does the voice or the body remember having been moved by others, with others? How might it feel at ease with the fugitive, at peace with the pursued, at rest with the ones who consent not to be one? Can our favourite Vegas-born poet of prophetic blackness and a South Central transmuter of social rage into beauty feel through each other?

Top Glasgow musicians turn out to support communities fighting back against fracking. Appearing so far: George Tucker, The Lonesome Hearts, Willie and the Poorboys, the Carlton Jugband with special guest Carola Cosimini, Nicky Murray & Chloe Rodgers, Anti-fracking busker Alexander Mccallum. Compere: the incomparable Gary Little. Entry £10 on the door or buy in advance from http://www.brownpapertickets.com

Just over 95% of our universe comes in the shrouded form of dark energy and matter that we can neither explain nor directly detect. Together, these two dark entities play out a cosmic battle of epic proportions. While the gravity of dark matter slowly pulls structures in the universe together, dark energy fuels the universes accelerated expansion, making it ever harder for those structures to grow. Catherine Heymans has used the world’s best telescopes to map out the invisible dark matter in our Universe and confront different theories on the dark universe. She will explore this dark enigma and describe where we will look next in our search for darkness. It is widely believed that in order to truely understand the dark universe we will need to invoke some new physics that will forever change our cosmic view.

Catherine Heymans is a Reader in Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, a European Research Council Fellow and a member of the Young Academy of Scotland. She specialises in observing the dark side of our Universe and co-leads the European Southern Observatory KiDS analysis team, using deep sky observations to test whether we need to go beyond Einstein with our current theory of gravity. Since completing her PhD at Oxford University in 2003, Catherine has held fellowships from the Max-Planck Institute and the Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics. When she is not busy unveiling the mysteries of the Universe or enthusiastically lecturing undergraduates, she can usually be found building sandcastles and paddling in the sea with her three small children.

Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately, this leaves the basement inaccessible to most wheelchair uses.

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Night Shelter Volunteer Recruitment Open Day
Wednesday, October 1 at 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Contact glasgownightshelter@gmail.com for full info

On Wednesday 1st October we’re planning a Volunteer Recruitment Open Day at the Night Shelter for people to come and find out a bit more about volunteering at the night shelter.

There’ll be a tour of the shelter as well as people talking about their experiences of volunteering as well as some of the men who stay at the shelter explaining what the shelter means to them.

It will be an ideal opportunity for anyone who has thought about volunteering at the night shelter to find out more about what it is like and what volunteering at the shelter involves.

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RiB at Document Film Festival
Saturday, October 11 at 12:00pm until late
CCA, 350 Sauchiehall St, G2 3JD

The Radical Indipnedant Bookfair will be doing a one day stall this year at our favourite human rights documentary film festival. We will be located up in the balcony. Setting up in the morning for a lunchtime opening we will likely be open till after the last film comes out.

The recent development of a range of technologies for genetic modification of animals means that the possibility of genetically modified farm animals being licensed for human consumption is getting closer. What are these technologies, and what are the applications that are being developed? The current regulations for licensing GM animals for food, including the differences between assessing GM animals and plants, will be discussed. Many of the objections to the use of GM technologies relate to societal issues rather than technological risks, so how does this relate to possible introduction of GM animals for food?

Professor Helen Sang was born in Edinburgh but went to high school in Brighton. She is a geneticist and molecular biologist, with a degree and PhD from Cambridge University. She continued her research career with postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard and Edinburgh universities. Since the 1980s, she has led a research group at the Roslin Institute (famous as the home of Dolly the sheep), with a research goal to develop methods for genetic modification of chickens with applications in basic biomedical research and for improving chicken breeds, particularly for enhancing resistance to major diseases including bird flu.

Doors open at 19:00 for a start at 19:30 sharp.
FREE

Accessibility: As per the policy of the Admiral Bar, access to the venue “can only be provided to patrons who are sufficiently mobile and capable of independently evacuating premises, or with the minimum of assistance.” Unfortunately, this leaves the basement inaccessible to most wheelchair users.